To keep up to date with all the technologies in SQL Server, the DBA or developer who wants to stay ahead is faced with the struggle of constant learning. With every new release, it seems that at least one entirely new application platform appears, alongside innumerable additions to, and improvement of, existing features. How do you keep up while avoiding information overload, unnecessary detours and dead-ends?

The SQL Server Stairways is our solution to this problem. Designed to smooth out even the steepest learning curve, each Stairway is a SQL tutorial series focused on a single topic and is arranged into no more than a dozen easily-navigable tutorials that we call 'steps'. Each step is the length of a typical magazine tutorial, and emphasizes practical, hands-on learning, with just enough background theory to help you understand the topic at a deeper level.

Using straightforward language and avoiding jargon and marketing babble, each Stairway tutorial series is designed to take you from zero knowledge of a particular SQL Server topic, to a level of practical understanding that will allow you to start using that feature in a production environment. The learning gradient is steady and manageable, but also brisk. You won't be wasting time.

Our team of Stairway Editors, including Kalen Delaney and Brad McGehee, have selected technical topics that all SQL Server DBAs and developers can benefit from mastering, and have persuaded leading experts in those fields to author them.

Redgate offers a selection of free PDF downloads of some of their books at this address:http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/#sqldev
Any book that has the "Free PDF download" link is available once you enter your name and email on the subsequent page.
The books are grouped into the following categories:

Sinan Aral is an Assistant Professor and Microsoft Faculty Fellow at the NYU Stern School of Business. He studies how behavioral contagions spread through social networks -- from products to productivity to public health. His novel research on information and behavioral diffusion in massive networks is being applied to a variety of fields including epidemiology, innovation management, organizational performance and development economics.

End users are bringing consumer devices into the organization! iPhones, iPads, Tablets and Smartphones are now part of the corporate environment. New desktop technologies such as VDI, Tablets, Consumerization, among other pressures, are causing many IT environments to consider re-architecting their desktop infrastructure. Learn how to separate myths from facts, learn how to develop a strategy focused on meeting your users desktop requirements based on roles / personas, rather than implying that one technology fits all, and discover Microsoft and partner solutions that enable a Flexible Workstyle.

The social web is designed to help you master tools (blogs, wikis, social networks, etc...) and practices related to the social web.
It also brings forth certain social science concepts to better understand and interpret the behaviour of social web users within a broader context of the information and knowledge society.

This Power Point presentation contains the latest wins from the New York office that pertain to Salesforce in various industries but mostly, the financial services sector. It is available to help turn our RFP's into winning proposals.

We leverage the combination of cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS), with its emphasis on productively creating well-tested, maintainable, reusable code, to let "one-pizza" teams of Berkeley undergrads design, develop, test, and deploy their own SaaS applications. Iteration-based agile development rewards regular progress, test-first design results in students actually enjoying testing, and cloud computing showcases deployed projects to friends, colleagues, and future employers, all while students absorb "big ideas" such as higher-order programming and metaprogramming.
I'll also discuss other uses of cloud computing at Berkeley from lower-division through graduate CS courses.

As cloud computing begins to mature, managing the opportunities and security challenges becomes crucial to business development.
Cloud Security Alliance guidance in its third edition seeks to establish a stable, secure baseline for cloud operations.

Digital Media introduces a smarter, more dynamic way of advertising to customers or communicating with staff Leveraging Fujitsu's TELentice™ system, a proven, robust technology, they enable you to easily schedule and send any combination of video, animation, text, audio and visuals directly to PCs, plasma screens, LCD screens, mobile phones, PDAs, Point-of-Sale displays, kiosks, ATMs or websites. Digital Media Solutions are already being used in Australia and around the world by many different organisations to distribute video announcements, advertisements, promotions, news, educational material and information.